Next Topic

'NEXT TOPIC' is a monthly lecture series at CentralTrak Artists’ Residency and Gallery which aims to foster critical discussions on contemporary art issues among Dallas artists, thinkers, critics, educators, theorist, and shapers across DFW area. These events are free and open to the public.

Fall 2015

Fall 2015

Septmenber 10 - Danielle Dean, Peter Bo Rappmund, Ariane Roesch

September 10 - 7pm:

Centraltrak is pleased to host an evening of conversation with artists from the exhibition It Came From CalArts. Danielle Dean, Peter Bo Rappmund and Ariane Roesch will discuss their work, their experience as dual citizens of CalArts and Texas, and the ways in which they continue to negotiate this blended territory. The discussion will also explore the notion and status of “interdisciplinary” work and the term itself as a label, whether it functions as a descriptive trope or signifies a living concept of experimentation and exchange. Moderated by exhibition curator Robin Myrick.

Bios

Danielle Dean's work explores the colonialism of mind and body—the interpellation of thoughts, feelings and social relations by power structures working through news, advertising, political speech, and digital media. She focuses on the processes of construction of race, gender, age and class that are generated through target-marketing practices, commodifying subjectivities. She is interested in subverting such processes towards a non-essentialist space of being, blurring fiction (metaphor) and reality. She studied Fine Art at Central St Martins in London and received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts. Her residencies have included the Whitney Independent Study program in New York City and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. She is currently an artist in resident on The Core program at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Solo exhibitions include Hexafluorosilicic and PTL(Part Time Lover) at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, Confession on a Dance Floor, The Bindery Projects, Minnesota. Group shows include, Made in L.A 2014, The Hammer Museum, Demolition Woman, Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University, Orange County, and Auto Italia South East, London. She has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Rema Hort Foundation, and most recently a Visual Art Award from Creative Capital, 2015.

Robin Myrick is a writer, visual artist, and educator based in Dallas, Texas. Her work engages the transitory nature of the mediated moment as expressed through television and film, portraiture and the body, and the rhetoric of identity, politics, consumerism, and disaster. She holds an MFA in Writing and Critical Studies from California Institute of the Arts, and is currently pursuing her doctorate in Aesthetic Studies at UT Dallas. She serves as Arts and Media Editor for Entropy magazine, among other endeavors, and is a member of the long lost art collective In Cooperation With Muscle Nation. She also curated the 2014 glitch exhibition Message (NOT) Received at UT Dallas.

Peter Bo Rappmund is a Dallas-based artist whose practice seeks new ways to understand time as it relates to concepts of space and place. He has exhibited his work at a variety of venues worldwide, including: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Anthology Film Archives; the National Maritime Museum, London; Rencontres, Paris and Berlin; REDCAT; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the California Academy of Sciences; and the Locarno, New York, Vienna, Vancouver, Ann Arbor, and Hong Kong International Film Festivals. PBR held a solo exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum in 2012, and his work resides in the permanent collections of public institutions such as the George Eastman House. PBR most recently finished principle photography on Thom Andersen's Reconversão, a film about Portuguese architect Souto de Moura, and is currently collaborating on Communion Los Angeles, a project about the 110 freeway, with Adam R. Levine. A graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder and CalArts, Peter Bo Rappmund holds an MFA in music composition and film/video.

Ariane Roesch, born 1984 in Germany, moved to Houston, TX, in 1996. She received a BFA from the University of Houston in 2007 and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2011. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at PS Project Space in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Horselaw Press in Zuerich, Switzerland, Michael Rosenthal Gallery in San Francisco, CA, and at Redbud Gallery in Houston, TX.

She was part of the research team for the Pacific Standard Time Exhibition, The Experimental Impulse, at RedCat (Los Angeles, CA) focusing on the cross over between LA Punk and Country Music in the late 1970s/early 80s.

She is also the founder of The UNIT Store – an online store and resource for limited edition prints, multiples, and publications by emerging and established artists.

Spring 2015

Spring 15

April 16, 7pm:CentralTrak is pleased to host Daniel Atkinson for it’s Next Topic lecture series, April 16, 2015 at 7:00 pm. Artist talks are seen as a necessity in many current exhibitions, but rarely do we ask ourselves what purpose they serve, where they originated, or why they exist at all. Overseeing artist talks at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Atkinson has gained an intimate familiarity with their range. Presenting on the history and meaning of artist talks, he will explore different methods and approaches artists have taken in speaking about their work that push away from the traditional, oversimplified, chronological narratives many expect. Conceived as a tool kit both to understand and generate new modes of presentation, the talk will seek to make the familiar form strangely unfamiliar.

February 5, 7pm:
CentralTrak is pleased to host Cuban artist Carlos Martiel on Thursday February 5, at 7:00 pm. Martiel’s work and world views will be discussed during the Next Topic. He has a finger on the pulse of conflict, openly commenting on and expressing his political views through performance. His primary medium is his own body, placing himself in painful and challenging situations. Martiel has performed acts as extreme as having bodily tissues surgically removed and encapsulated as an award in order to dignify the lives of people being marginalized in contemporary Cuba due to skin color. The impressive degree to which Martiel is willing to act for his beliefs will be the center of discussion in this Next Topic moderated by SMU’s Beatriz Balanta.

Spring 2014

Spring 14

Dates: Jan 9, Feb 6, March 6, April 3, May 15, June 5

June 5, 7pm:
On Thursday June 5th, 7 p.m. Next Topic, writer Laray Polk will discuss “Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe,” the recently released book co-authored by Noam Chomsky. Topics in the book will be explored in relation to Texas as it has over time become a dumping ground for the country’s radioactive waste. The state has also become a convergent point for environmental activism over the controversial proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The discussion will include images of West Texas’ “Nuclear Alley and acts of recent nonviolent protest in East Texas, followed by a Q&A.

Laray Polk - A Dallas-based multimedia artist and writer. Her articles and investigative reports have appeared in The Dallas Morning News, D Magazine and In These Times. She is a 2009 and 2013 grant recipient from The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute for stories on radioactive waste and energy issues. Since Polk’s 2013 release of the book “Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe,”co-authored by Noam Chomsky, it has been translated into Spanish, Turkish and French. Polk recently co-produced an immersive installation with British artist David Cotterrell for the “Code Yellow” exhibition at UTD and CentralTrak.

May 15, 7pm:
The art scene in Dallas has been experiencing significant growth over the past few years. Included in that growth has been an impressive collection of dance troupes. This upcoming installment of CentralTrak’s NEXT TOPIC will focus on the changing dance scenes by bringing together Mark Lowry, the co-Founder, editor and chief theater critic of TheaterJones.com; Joshua L. Peugh, Founder and Artistic Director of Dark Circles Contemporary Dance; Danielle Georgiou, a Dallas based dancer/choreographer, video artist, and writer; and Jamie Thompson, a dancer for the Dallas Black Dance Theatre. The discussion will center around the growth of small dance companies and projects within the Dallas metroplex, the financial funding, the education of dancers, the competitive nature of dance, and other issues facing contemporary dance in DFW.

Bios
Mark Lowry
Mark is the co-Founder, editor and chief theater critic of TheaterJones.com. He was a staff writer and theater critic at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram from 1998 to 2008, where he also wrote about dance, opera, dining, music and pop culture. He was a proud drama geek in high school and studied theater in college before turning his focus to journalism at the University of Texas at Arlington. Mark is a member of the American Theater Critics Association. In 2003, he was selected for a fellowship at the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, for which he received a scholarship from the New York Times Foundation. He co-founded TheaterJones in early 2009, and now serves as its editor-in-chief as well as the CEO of Cloudbusting Media, Inc. He has written for the Dallas Observer, Dallas Morning News, FW Weeky, Auditoria and other publications, and is frequent contributor to the Star-Telegram, DFW.com and Dallas Voice. He lives in Dallas.

Joshua L. Peugh
Joshua L. Peugh is the Founder and Artistic Director of Dark Circles Contemporary Dance and an Adjunct Lecturer of Dance at Southern Methodist University. In 2006, Joshua moved to South Korea to join Universal Ballet Company where he performed soloist and featured roles in the works of Ohad Naharin, Christopher Wheeldon and others. After two-and-a-half years with the company, Joshua left UBC and co-founded his own company, Dark Circles Contemporary Dance, in Seoul. Since then, he has created work for festivals all over Asia and North America winning awards for his choreography in Korea, Japan, and Canada. Joshua has been commissioned to create new dance works for BODYTRAFFIC, BalletX, Dallas Black Dance Theatre II, Southern Methodist University, and Booker T. Washington HSPVA. He has also served as a juror for the Asian Film Festival of Dallas, as Associate Choreographer for Bruce Wood Dance Project, and will be a member of the adjudication panel for the Cecchetti International Classical Ballet Competition of 2014.

Danielle Georgiou
Danielle Georgiou is a dancer/choreographer, video artist, and writer based in Dallas, TX. She recently directed and produced, Dirty Filthy Diamonds, with her dance company, DGDG: the Danielle Georgiou Dance Group, and choreographed Her Song for Echo Theatre Dallas. Currently, she is developing a new piece for DGDG with her partner, Justin Locklear, for the summer of 2014. She will have a solo show of her video and sound work at Austin’s Women and their Work in May 2014. Her work has shown across Texas, New York (the Horton Gallery), California (Rogue Fringe Festival, Fresno), Oregon (Portland’s Experiment Film Festival), and Germany (2nd Berlin Becher Triennial). She is represented by Ro2 Art (Dallas, TX). She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. She writes a monthly column for TheaterJones and is the newest arts contributor for the Dallas Observer.

Jamie Thompson
From Belize, Central America, Thompson is a recent graduate of Belhaven University (Jackson, Mississippi) where he received his B.F.A. in Dance Performance and Choreography. He received additional training from Belize National Dance Company and Dramatic Forces School of Dance. His previous dance experience includes serving as dancer, choreographer and teacher for Belize National Dance Company and dancing with Talk Dance Company of Jackson, Mississippi. His special community interests include working with organizations that work for the betterment and development of youth. He is currently a dancer for the Dallas Black Dance Theatre.

April 3, 7 pm:

Digital technology has forever changed how we view photography, as a process, and photographs, as the result of that activity. In fact, we may question whether the term “photography” has become obsolete. But what term will replace it? In what category does photography belong?
￼This panel will discuss the exhibition Photography & Materiality, an overview of contemporary investigations by emerging artists who create “photography about photography”. How do these artists negotiate dominant photographic codes, which influence framing and rendering of the subject, using them as strategies to prompt viewer awareness? How can a photographic image prompt empathy in the viewer, without necessarily revealing details corresponding to a literal subject, without extensive visual explanation? Why do we expect photographs to present a “direct transcription of the real” to quote John Tagg? Why do these artists choose to release the subject before the camera, in a sense, rather than pin it down for examination, echoing Lyle Rexer’s concept of the “withdrawal of the subject”? How do these artists invite participation, of the spectator, of other image­makers, of their subject?

SPEAKERS:

Danielle Avram Morgan
Danielle Avram Morgan is an independent curator based in Dallas, TX. She was previously Manager of the Power Station in Dallas, TX and Curatorial Assistant for Photography and Modern and Contemporary Art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA. Danielle has participated as a portfolio reviewer for Photolucida (Portland, OR), Critical Mass (Portland, OR), Slideluck Potshow (Dallas, TX) and Atlanta Celebrates Photography (Atlanta, GA). She holds an MFA from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Mona Kasra
Mona Kasra is a media artist, educator, and a PhD candidate at University of Texas at Dallas in Arts and Technology with a focus in Emerging Media & Communications. Her research is centered around the impact, power, and politics of the digital mage in the networked era. She is especially interested in ways by which digital images, coupled with social media technologies, reconstruct the extent of public awareness and action against unjust sociopolitical affairs around the world. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Video Association of Dallas and has programmed, curated, and juried for several film festivals. Mona holds an M.F.A. in Video/Digital Art and has exhibited in numerous exhibitions both in gallery and online settings. She has also presented at several conferences including SXSW Interactive and SPE National Conference (The Society for Photographic Education), and in 2011, served as the Art Gallery Chair at SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) in Vancouver, Canada.

Emily Loving
Much of Emily Loving’s work has been influenced by the power photographic images have on us, the viewer. She deletes, cuts, marks and alters to challenge photography’s static and temporal qualities. Each image is a construction formation from fragments or portions of images, which she refers to as “marks of interruptions.”
The Dallas­based artist is currently teaching at the University of Texas at Dallas and Richland College. She also works as a freelance lifestyle and food photographer.

Marilyn Waligore
Marilyn Waligore is Professor of Aesthetic Studies / Photography at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she has directed the photography program since 1989. She previously served as Assistant Professor of Painting and Photography at The College of Wooster in Ohio. Waligore received an MFA degree from the University of Wisconsin­Madison and undergraduate degrees in Art and in English from the University of California­Berkeley. Her articles on photography have appeared in Leonardo and Photography Quarterly, and she has curated numerous group exhibitions. Her photographs and online media projects have been exhibited widely, including the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain, the Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy, Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden, National Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand, SIGGRAPH, Los Angeles, California, the New York Digital Salon, School of Visual Arts, NYC, Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York, the Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Houston Center for Photography, Houston, Texas, the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, California, the Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio, A.R.C, Artists/Residents of Chicago, Illinois, and in Austin, Texas at the Laguna Gloria Art Museum, Women & Their Work, and in the Texas Biennial, Mexican American Cultural Center. She is a recipient of grants and awards, including an Artist Fellowship in Visual Arts from the Ohio Arts Council, the Arts Midwest/ National Endowment of the Arts Regional Visual Arts Fellowship in Photography, and the Moss/Chumley North Texas Artist Award in Photography and New Genres.

March 6, 7 pm:
The second lecture of NEXT TOPIC’s two-part series on Middle Eastern contemporary art will be lead by writer, curator, and artist Noah Simblist. Simblist will be interpenetrating relationships between art, activism, architecture, archaeology and film and their connection to the flourishing new forms of art practices in the Israel-Palestine-Lebanon region, a geographical zone where tremendous political turmoil is nothing new. Artists discussed will include Yael Bartana, Ayreen Anastas, Ariella Azoulay, Akram Zaatari, and Khaled Hourani.

Noah Simblist
An Associate Professor of Art at Southern Methodist University, works as a writer, curator, and artist with a focus on art and politics in Israel-Palestine. He has contributed to Art Journal, Modern Painters, Art Papers, Art Lies, and Art21. Writing projects include Setting Sail: The Aesthetics of Politics on the Gaza Flotilla; The Art of Forgetfulness, the Trauma of Memory: Yael Bartana and Artur Zmijewski; and interviews with Khaled Hourani, Omer Fast, Yoshua Okon, Jill Magid, AL Steiner and AK Burns, Walead Beshty and Nicholas Schaffhausen. He was on the curatorial team for the 2013 Texas Biennial.Jan 9, 7 pm:
CentralTrak welcomes back former visiting artist Larissa Aharoni to discuss the national debut of her book “GO COWBOYS,” a stark presentation of public executions from various places and time periods throughout visually recorded history. This book was initially conceived and produced during her CentralTrak residency. Aharoni will be accompanied by David L. Noblin, Sr., Co-Coordinator of the Dallas Chapter of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and Charissa Terranova, Assistant Professor of Aesthetic Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas. The Q&A will be moderated by CentralTrak Resident Liz Trosper.

SPEAKERS:
Larissa Aharoni
Born in 1974 in Cologne (Germany), Larissa Aharoni currently lives and works in Berlin. Aharoni holds a masters degree from the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf (2005). She was among the founders of UBERBAU, an independent art space that operated in Düsseldorf from 2000 to 2006. Aharoni, spent much of her career living and working in Tel Aviv (Israel), where she was a visiting artist in the masters program at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. Since 2006, she has participated in several residency programs, produced numerous solo & group exhibitions throughout Israel, the US, and Europe.

David L. Noblin
Co-Coordinator of the Dallas Chapter of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, a grassroots membership organization comprised of individuals and groups who work to end the death penalty in all cases, everywhere. It is an inclusive organization composed of human rights activists; crime victims and their families; persons working within the criminal justice system; persons opposed to capital punishment on religious and moral grounds; death row prisoners and their families; and other concerned citizens opposed to capital punishment.

Charissa Terranova
Charissa N. Terranova is Assistant Professor of Aesthetic Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas. She lectures and teaches seminars on art and architectural history, theory, and criticism and media and new media theory. She is a scholarly writer and freelance curator and critic working both nationally and internationally. In January 2010, she stepped down from the position of Founding Director and Chief Curator of Centraltrak: The UT Dallas Artists Residency in order to complete her scholarly manuscript.

Fall 2013

Fall 2013

Dec 12, 7 pm:

On December 12th CentralTrak’s NEXT TOPIC ends the fall semester by bringing together Leigh Arnold , curator of the current exhibition 'Sadie Hawkins’, educator Shilyh Warren, and visual artist and poet Rosemary Meza. The three guests will discuss feminism in art and how the pairing of the two has evolved over the years. Which glass ceilings remain to be shattered? Is feminism even important in contemporary art? Do artists care and should they? We hope you can join us for conversations that are bound to challenge preconceived notions of gender roles and female
￼empowerment.

This session will be moderated and lead by Aja Martin.

PANELISTS:

Leigh A. Arnold
A curatorial fellow at the Nasher Sculpture Center and consulting curator for the exhibition “Robert Smithson in Texas” at the Dallas Museum of Art on view through April 2014. She has previously held the position of research fellow at the Dallas Museum of Art for the special project “DallasSITES: Charting Contemporary Art, 1963 to Present,” which culminated in an exhibition and online publication in the spring of 2013. Arnold is currently working on her PhD in Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas where she plans to write on Robert Smithson's relationship to Texas. Arnold is the curator of the CentralTrak exhibition “Sadie Hawkins”.Dr. Shilyh Warren
Teaches a range of courses in film studies, including documentary, independent and experimental cinema, world cinema and women's cinema. She has also taught film studies and gender studies at North Carolina State University and Duke University.
She received her MA and PhD in Literature from Duke University. She also holds an MA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College, where she earned an undergraduate degree in Women's Studies.
Currently at work on a book manuscript about feminist film culture, theory, and practice of the seventies, her most recent articles are forthcoming in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society and Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media.
￼￼Rosemary Meza
DesPlas is a visual artist and poet from Dallas, TX. She received her Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of North Texas. Ms. Meza­DesPlas has exhibited locally and internationally in museums and galleries including New Mexico Museum of Art, Wade Wilson Art (Santa Fe, NM), ARC Gallery & Educational Foundation (Chicago, IL), A.I.R. Gallery (NYC,NY), Espace Kiron (Paris, France), and Actuel’Art Lagalerie (Paris, France). She will present a paper titled “Desire: The Norm of Imperfection” at the Mod Art’13 Conference in Istanbul, Turkey in November 2013. In April 2014 she will be exhibiting in Shenyang, China in “Half the Sky: Intersections in Social Practice Art”. Ms. Meza­DesPlas is also a writer and self­published a poetry chapbook in 1995 called The Laughter Between My Legs. She is featured in the 2007 video Triumph of our Communities: Artists and Organizations produced by the Hispanic Research Center, Arizona State University. Meza­DesPlas has taught at El Centro College in downtown Dallas since 1999.

Nov 14, 7 pm:
CentralTrak Next Topic is pleased to host a two-part series of reflective discussions on contemporary art practices in the Middle East pertaining to the ongoing political turmoil, war, and conflict in the region. Participating speakers in the upcoming session will discuss the rich contemporary art scene in the neighboring countries Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. In spring 2014, Noah Simblist will continue this topic by giving a lecture on current art practices in the geographical region of Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon.

SPEAKERS:Dr. Nada Shabout, an Associate Professor of Art History and the Director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Studies Institute (CAMCSI) at the University of North Texas.

Morehshin Allahyari, a new media artist and an art activist, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Art and Technology department at the University of Texas in Dallas and the art director of Siamak Pourzand Foundation.

Tuba Öztekin Köymen, a Dallas/Fort Worth artist and designer, and Adjunct Professor of Photography at the Texas Christian University.

PROGRAM:Dr. Nada Shabout-
Talk: “In lieu of Revolutions: New Hot Spots for Art"
At the start of the 21st century, and as old cities of the Arab World, the traditional cultural hubs in the region (Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus) are dismantled through wars, invasion and revolts, new global cities promoting new art centers (Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi) are on the rise. The new cities of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are arguably peculiar in their identity and politics. This talk explores the reasons behind this cultural shift and thedynamics of the new global cultural bubble.

Bio: Nada Shabout is an Associate Professor of Art History and the Director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Studies Institute (CAMCSI) at the University of North Texas, USA. She is the Consulting Director of the Research Center on Arab Modernity at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar. She is the Senior Curator for the inaugural exhibition at Mathaf, Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art, and curator of Interventions: A dialogue between the Modern and the Contemporary. Her teaching and writing interests are in the area of Arab and Islamic visual culture, theory and history, imperialism, Orientalism and globalization. She is the author of Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics, University of Florida Press, 2007; co-editor of New Vision: Arab Art in the 21st Century, Thames & Hudson, 2009; and the founding president of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art from the Arab World, Iran and Turkey (AMCA).

Morehshin Allahyari-
Talk: “Iranian art scene”
In the last 5-6 years, the Iranian art scene has gone through a sudden yet interesting shift from traditional to new media art. Morehshin Allahyari will talk about the contemporary Iranian art scene with focus on art and technology and some of the most interesting works of some the Iranian new media artists, art galleries, and festivals.

Bio: Morehshin Allahyari is a new media artist and an art activist. She was born and raised in Iran and moved to the United States in 2007. Her creative and research interest encompasses experimental 3D animation, digital filmmaking, installation, performance and extensive activity as a cultural curator. Coming from a social science background, the topics of her practice include political and social art, creative writing, art activism, community building and collaborative art. Morehshin’s animated films and curatorial projects have received world wide acclaim. She has been part of many national and international exhibitions, festivals, and conferences in Europe, the Middle East, North and South America. She recently recieved the Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough award from Dallas Museum of Art and was an artist in residence at the Film and Media program at the Banff Centre in summer of 2013. Morehshin is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Art and Technology department at the University of Texas in Dallas and the art director of Siamak Pourzand Foundation.

Tuba Öztekin Köymen-
Talk: “Resistgezi: The power of resistance, social media and collective life.”
Looking at Gezi Park events. On May 31st, Taksim Square and Gezi Park, which is a public domain with a lot of trees, in Istanbul Turkey were occupied by the people who tried to save the space. This event transformed the public for the following two weeks until they were violently evacuated by the police. Köymen will give a talk on how, for the participants, this event turned into an artistic, transformative experience and functioned as a vehicle for creative self-expression in a public space.

Bio: Tuba Öztekin Köymen is an artist and designer who lives and works in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. She was born in Turkey and graduated in 1995 from the Department of Graphic Design at Bilkent University. In 1999, she received an MFA in Photography and Digital imaging from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Köymen has had solo exhibitions locally and internationally in museums and galleries including the Center of Documentary Studies at Duke University, Light Factory (North Carolina), Austin College (Sherman, Texas), and the Museum Center in Baku, Azerbaijan. Köymen has organized or assisted in the organization of many exhibitions of photography and art — including the Istanbul Biennial — and has led or participated in workshops, collaborative projects, and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. She is currently an adjunct professor of Photography at the Texas Christian University. She will be at Austin College, Sherman as a visiting professor in Spring of 2014.

Modern society and technology have made it very easy for the average individual to experience art passively without careful contemplation or necessary productive reaction. Many have combated this by developing artwork that aims to inspire more active social engagement. During the month of October Dallas will premiere the work of three renowned ‘Social Practice’ artists: Janeil Engelstad, founder of the ‘MAP’ project, and two ‘Nasher Xchange’ Artists Vicki Meek, independent curator and cultural critic, and Rick Lowe, creator of the widely successful ‘Project Row Houses’. CentralTrak brings these artists together for one night only, through the gracious hosts of The Dallas Contemporary (dcU), for a panel discussion that promises to be both lively and informative.

Janeil Engelstad-
The founder of MAP (Make Art with Purpose) is organizer and producer of the ‘Dallas MAP Project’, A festival and exhibition of projects that restore and preserve the environment, promote social justice and advance human knowledge and well-being, Dallas - Fort Worth. She is an internationally known Artist, lecturer, social practitioner, Fulbright Scholar and an advocate for critical cultural development through the arts.

Vicki Meek-
A nationally recognized artist residing in Dallas whose public arts commissions and installation artworks are noted for engaging their viewer in an effort to foster dialogue on difficult subject matter. Meek is an independent curator and writes cultural criticism for her blog, Art & Racenotes. She is currently the Manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center and serves as Chair of the Board of Directors for National Performance Network.

Rick Lowe –
A Houston-based artist who is internationally respected for one of the most successful community art projects in the world, ‘Project Row Houses’, located in Houston’s Third Ward neighborhood. In addition to Project Row Houses, Lowe has worked as a guest artist on a range of projects, including the Rem Koolhaas-designed Seattle Public Library; Small Business/Big Change in Anyang, South Korea, the Borough Project for the Spoleto Festival 2003 in Charleston, S.C.; and the Delray Beach Cultural Loop in Florida to name only a few.

Greg Metz-
Greg Metz has held a Senior Lecturer position in the Arts and Performance program since 1994. He holds a B.F.A. degree in from East Texas State University (1974) and an M.F.A. degree in from Indiana University (1979). He was awarded a fellowship to study at the Yale Summer School of Music and Art (1973) and Indiana University Graduate Program. He has exhibited artworks nationally and internationally in a variety of venues including: Grand Palace, Amsterdam, Koln Cathedral, Koln Germany, General Post Office, Dublin, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Washington National Mall, Dallas Museum of Art, San Antonio Art Museum, Arlington Art Museum and numerous public and private collections. His work is primarily issue oriented and political in nature focusing on art as propaganda and editorial, earning him reviews in San Francisco's Art Week, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Mother Jones, San Diego Chronicle, Boston Herald, Washington Times, NPR radio, New York Times as well as numerous regional publications.

Sep 5, 7 pm:
'Creative Computation'

'NEXT TOPIC' returns for the fall season with a series of illuminating events kicked off by two in-depth conversations on creative computation and techniques by which artists can enhance their expression through computer science and engineering.

Participating Lecturers::
- Paul Fishwick, Distinguished Endowed Chair of Arts and Technology and Professor of Computer Science at University of Texas at Dallas (UTD)
- Ira Greenberg, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering & Director of Center of Creative Computation at Southern Methodist University (SMU)

Title: Making Code Drip
Speaker: Ira Greenberg
Trained as a painter, I explored the visual world studying rhythm, pattern. color, form and the problem of discretely recording this infinite data onto a static, flat, finite surface. Over time the motif and resultant "painting/data" transitioned from landscape, to tree, to foliage, to pure marks and patterned color fields. At some point I realized I was painting algorithms, which coincided with a growing interest in computer graphics. It also slowly dawned on me that if I could learn to master "computation" as a craft oriented medium, I could essentially create multi-dimensional worlds, paintings that moved, evolved and ultimately emerged–perhaps even not completely under my own explicit control. This transition in my work–from paint to code–occurred approximately 15 years ago.
My work today, looking in from the outside, can be misconstrued as computer science research; it's not. I'm not sure if it's "Art" either. However, it's work I continue to be intrigued by.

Title: Creative Automata
Speaker: P. Fishwick
There was a time when artists and computer scientists were one. This was a time dominated by the creation of automata made of metal and wood, and extravagantly crafted. With relatively new computing technology, we revisit this mode of "coding" and "computing" through immersive games such as Minecraft and maker-culture with micro controllers and 3D printing.

The session will be followed by Q&A with the audience.

Spring 2013

March 21, 7 pm:
Artist and curator Nathan Green, artist and UTD Professor John Pomara, and artist and educator Kim Camdus Owens will discuss issues surrounding CentralTrak's current exhibition 'Failing Flat: Sculptural Tendencies in Painting,' a group exhibition of paintings that exist in a dual state of objecthood and the pictorial, featuring the work of Ivin Ballen, T.J. Donovan, Faith Gay, and Shane Tolbert, curated by Nathan Green.

April 4, 7 pm:Rebecca Carter Artist Lecture
Rebecca Carter's works explore states of intimacy and alienation as they shift through reading, touch, and other states of reception. She engages processes of appropriation, tracing, erasing, reconstructing, and the performative in various media, notably the groundless thread drawing and video. She holds an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Studio/Art History and Women's Studies from Oberlin College. www.rebeccacarter.org

April 18, 7pm: Panel discussion on ‘Art Writing & Art Criticism in Texas', addressing:
Why 'Art Criticism'? Do we need it?
Is there a clear mission for art writing, criticism, or the role of the critic?
What's the role of expertise in writing art criticism? Does the art critic need training in art?
What's the difference between art criticism and art reporting?
What is the art critics's part in shaping an art scene?
How is social media and citizen journalism affecting the domain of 'Art Criticism'?
What is the present condition of 'Art Criticism' in Dallas?

Panelists:

Frances Colpitt is the Deedie Potter Rose Chair of Art History at TCU and a specialist in contemporary art, theory and criticism.

Charles Dee Mitchell is a freelance writer and a contributor to The Dallas Observer, The Dallas Morning News, and Art in America.

Peter Simek is the arts editor for D Magazine, where he manages, edits, and serves as the primary movie critic and reporter for FrontRow.

Charissa Terranova is Assistant Professor of Aesthetic Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas. She is a scholarly writer and freelance curator and critic working both nationally and internationally.

Moderator:

Jerome Weeks is the Art & Seek producer-reporter for KERA and a professional critic for more than two decades.

May 2, 7 pm: Panel Discussion on 'Creating an Art Community/Scene’

Panelists:

Peter Doroshenko is the Executive Director at the Dallas Contemporary, Texas.

Kevin Ruben Jacobs is the owner of Oliver Francis Gallery, an independent/artist run experimental art space in Dallas.

Lucy Kirkman is a current member of Socialized Contemporary Artists Bureau Collective (S.C.A.B). She co-runs DTFU, an alternative gallery space in Dallas.

Richard Patterson is an artist currently based in Dallas, Texas. He is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs).

Moderator:

Leigh Arnold is Research Project Coordinator at Dallas Museum of Art.

May 16, 7 pm: “Not On Speaking ‘Terms’: Trauma and Beauty” with Denise Prince
This NEXT TOPiC session is focused on the work of Denise Prince — a featured artist in CentralTrak’s upcoming exhibition “That Mortal Coil”— who will be present, but in a performative capacity only.
In her series of photographs in "That Mortal Coil," Prince quotes constructed images used in a Missioni fashion campaign from 2009. The artist states, “I began working with and against the strategies of this catalog, photographing people who have experienced severe physical trauma from accident, birth defect or assault to surpass standards of representation.”
In lieu of a traditional artist’s talk, Prince has invited her psychoanalyst (Lacanian) to process her work in an experimental live “couch session,” in which Merward will conduct critical commentary on Prince’s work while she sits present, but silent.

Heyd Fontenot is an artist, curator and current director of CentralTrak - The University of Texas at Dallas Artists Residency. He is the curator of "That Mortal Coil."

Daniel Kusner is a writer, editor, and producer based in Dallas, Texas.

R.E. Cox is one of the participating artist in "That Mortal Coil." Cox creates fleshy sculptures using orthopedic compression hosiery and any assortment of found objects.

Moderator:

Charissa Terranova is Assistant Professor of Aesthetic Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas. She is a scholarly writer and freelance curator and critic working both nationally and internationally.

June 13, 7 pm: Nina Schwanse - Artist LectureNina Schwanse (born Los Angeles, CA) is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in New Orleans. She is one of the exhibiting artists in CentralTrak's current exhibition "That Mortal Coil," with her video work Squirting.

Schwanse chooses to work with her own body as a primary subject and material, distorting her image with both cosmetics and characterizations, sometimes employing drag performance à la Victor/Victoria. In her video piece Squirting, the bikini-clad Schwanse, presents herself as object d’art on a plinth, disappearing in degrees with the aid of green-screen technology and a squirt-bottle of paint. It’s a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t reverse strip tease. This progression is life-imitating-art-imitating-porn-imitating-death.

Schwanse has been included in screenings and exhibitions internationally and is a member of Good Children, an artist-run gallery in New Orleans.

This session will be moderated and led by Beth Taylor, director of Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas, Texas.

Fall 2012

FALL 2012:

This fall, Next Topic will examine new media art.

Oct. 11th: UT Dallas arts and technology (ATEC) professors Frank Dufour and Thomas Riccio,
They will be discussing their collaborative multi-media exhibition Not So Indifferent, which is currently on display in the CentralTrak gallery. The exhibit combines digital media with site-specific design to create an existential drama – a performance that features the viewing public as lead actors.

“Not So Indifferent can be experienced as an interactive multimedia poem. A film is continuously read and analyzed by a program installed on three computers. Each computer generates sounds extracted from the film, or inspired by it, and displays images from a large database of clips that represent our collective visual and televisual memory,” said Dufour.

Oct 25: Paula Gaetano Adi,
Gaetano Adi is an artist and researcher working in sculpture, performance, interactive installation and robotic agents. Using the human and nonhuman body as a point of departure, her work deals with different cultural studies of technoscience, particularly in regard to human subjectivity and how they can be reflected through art. Gaetano Adi holds a MFA with emphasis in Arts & Technology from The Ohio State University. She is currently Assistant Professor of New Media in the University of North Texas - College of Visual Arts and Design.

Nov 8: Alejandro Borsani,
Borsani is a new media artist whose work is an active exploration of the nature of perception and media representation. He holds a MFA in electronic arts from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York and a MFA in electronic visualization from the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Nov 29: Brittany Ransom,
Ransom is an artist and educator working in interactive installations, electronic art objects, and site specific interventions that strive to probe the line between human, animal, and environmental relations while exploring emergent technologies. She received her MFA with a focus in New Media Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dec 13: A panel discussion with "Co- Re-Creating Spaces" artists Morehshin Allahyari, Kristen Cochran, Cassandra Emswiler, Greg Metz, Karen Weiner, and Michael Corris, together with curators Carolyn Sortor and Mike Morris, moderated by Mona Kasra.
The panel will discuss the works in the exhibition and, time permitting, explore larger questions regarding the systems or spaces we inhabit and how artists are contributing to their re-imagining and re-creation.
http://www.centraltrak.net/portfolios/corecreatingspaces/